Ultimately Good
by Onesmartcookie78
Summary: For the Quidditch FanFiction Competition: Round Eight: The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black. Can read without having read "Only the Good are Weak", but it is recommended. One-shot.


Ultimately Good

Onesmartcookie78

**Summary**: Can read without having read "Only the Good are Weak", but it is recommended.

**Disclaimer**: I only own Riley/Sarah.

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Regulus Black wasn't sure how far off the path of evil he'd gone until he met her. He'd already begun to doubt himself at the time, rebelling belatedly against the prejudices that had been ingrained in his soul long enough to become second nature. It wasn't his fault, no truly, anyway. He just lacked the ability to resist the not-so-subtle dance of manipulation that his parents had swayed him with when he was younger.

Mudbloods were bad. Fact of life right there. Muggles were only slightly worse. Both deserved death. Half-bloods weren't terrible, but they didn't deserve to be in his presence. Squibs were laughable. House-elves were slaves beaten by his Neo-Nazi mother, and they, for some reason, also had it coming. Half-breeds were wretched and wizards were superior to everyone, including witches. Women were beneath him, he was meant to live off his inheritance, he had to support the Dark Lord. Even some pureblood families were off limits, such as the Weasleys for being blood-traitors and the Zabinis for not sticking to it when things were heading south.

And he had believed it. He really had. They'd had him completely, irrevocably, brainwashed. Nothing his brother Sirius had to say was important because he was a stupid Gryffindor, a blood-traitor. His parents had ruled his life and he'd been okay with it.

Then he'd become a Death Eater and it felt like everything he'd ever learnt had flown straight out the window. Suddenly, the world wasn't quite as patriarchal as his parents had lead him to believe. Bellatrix Lestrange, his cousin, was second in command, despite being a woman. They received advice on rare occasion from a painting of a beautiful woman with emerald eyes. The world, as far as Regulas was concerned, had gone topsy-turvy.

Things that were up were no longer up, but striped and polka-dotted and as far down as hell. There was a hierarchy, but it wasn't crafted around him and he fell in the bottom of its cruelty.

He was constantly trying to prove himself, to no avail. He was confused and lonely. None of his friends had been brave enough to become Death Eaters, his parents had passed, and he had ruined things with his brother too, enough that there was no chance of them speaking again.

He had been lost. But the painting was there. Not in his house, but in the Dark Lord's base in this forest in Albania. There was a little shack that looked run-down and beaten up, but was really an elegant mansion on the outside. You-Know-Who hated the curb appeal, needless to say, but loved the aesthetically pleasing interior. Or he would, if he was capable of love.

The painting was treasured, Regulus found. He didn't know why, or even who the beautiful woman was, but she was there, almost as though she had no other frame to attend to. And perhaps she didn't; he didn't recognise her from history books or anything. She hung in the library though, always the library, and there he went every day.

Bellatrix had warned him once that the painting had some sort of charm on it. She had been vague on the details of her knowledge of such, but from what he gathered, jealousy had lead her to believe so. Apparently the Dark Lord would go into the library every night at some arbitrary hour of reckoning and, like clockwork, was immediately drawn there. The painting was the first place he visited on his way in and the last thing he saw on his way out.

Regulus discovered it to be true one night, holding his breath and casting at Disillusionment charm on himself. He'd fallen asleep, but had been woken up when Lord Voldemort had entered. He'd said something to the painting, a guilty look on his face, and then found a book. He'd read a couple pages, visited the painting again and then left.

Unable to contain his curiosity, Regulus went to the painting. Her name was Riley Andora Black. His ancestor. She was the one who convinced him to be good in the end. For her initials, not his, did he leave the note in the false locket.

She'd set him straight- forced him to see the world for how it really was with a few stubborn comments, persuasive speeches and charming smiles. She was as manipulative as his parents, but for the right reasons. He wasn't sure if that made screwing with his mind any better, but when he became sickened by the work of the Death Eaters, he decided that it probably was. Worth it, that is, to have his entire ideology rewritten solely to save innocent lives

Then things had regained the sharp clarity he was used to. He wasn't quite as lonely, he found the time to become friends with Kreature to put her plan in action, and hell was no longer striped and polka-dotted and hell in disguise. Up was up and it was usually good, like he'd become. It was synonymous with ascension and he dragged himself out of the dark depths of his despair.

Still she talked to him. She told him of a time when Lord Voldemort had been but a school boy with a superiority complex named Tom Riddle. She'd told him of a time when he could still be stopped. She'd told him of a time where she bad mistakenly loved that boy and trusted him even though she knew so much better. She'd told him of a time when she was Sarah Lucas.

She was the ultimate good, but even she had toed the line. And, as he'd found, it had cost her dearly. They were so much alike; bad to start with, influenced by their surroundings, then confused. Then they'd seen the light and how much prettier it was to live without the darkness and, ultimately, they'd become good.


End file.
